


Untitled

by Unicoranglais



Category: Super Dangan Ronpa 2
Genre: AU, Angst, F/F, Fluff, Humor, Psychological Horror, kiiiiiinda, only not really
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2015-04-13
Updated: 2015-04-25
Packaged: 2018-03-22 17:08:39
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 4
Words: 13,239
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3736882
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Unicoranglais/pseuds/Unicoranglais
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Following their timely escape from Enoshima's torture, Koizumi thought that nothing could possibly have pushed her love for Mioda any further. She'd been through hell by Mioda's side, she'd fled with her fingers entwined with the guitarist's, and she'd figured that nothing could possibly be worse than what they'd finally left behind.</p><p>But what do you do when you're going through hell at the hands of a mad avenger, and all you have to remind you of your loved one is a stuttering video feed and a camera?</p><p>No matter how stubborn you are, or how much you struggle, you'll break in the end.</p><p>No matter how prepared you think you are, you'll despair with your loved one's screams in your ears.</p><p>And no matter how important you'd like to think you might be, you'll know that this won't be a story worth so much as a title.</p><p>(Koizumi x Ibuki fluff/angsting via complete Skype torture, because I do love this pairing, and I do love my really weird formats. The other three tagged are main characters as well, but they ain't shipped.)</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chat

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> (never try to run, stay and talk a while)

**A/N:** Sooooo, I saw the trailer for that Unfriended movie, and the format intrigued me if nothing else. For those not in the know, the whole of that movie takes place on a computer; the vast majority happens in a Skype chat, but other websites also make appearances. I have strong negative opinions about the film and the way it was marketed, but the format was interesting enough for me to give writing a Skype convo or five a shot, and for the rest of you it means that you lot finally get some Koizumi/Ibuki fluff 'n' feels from me - which considering that it's been my OTP for a long while now, is probably expected. 

This story doesn't follow the plot of Unfriended; there's nods and some similarities, but it ends there. It's also very much a mini-series, as indicated by the chapter count - it's essentially a gimmick fic, and I didn't want it to outstay its welcome.

* * *

One sunny morning, the well-known fashionista Junko Enoshima disappeared.

It wasn't flashy - though the exact details weren't recorded anywhere, so whether or not her disappearance _had_ involved anything flashy wasn't something anyone knew. If it was flashy though, no-one had seen it, making it something of a waste of time. Either way, though - one day she was stalking the halls of Hope's Peak Academy, her head chock-full of plans to make the whole world despair - and the next, she was simply  _gone_. Much like her twin sister a few years ago, she had apparently disappeared without a trace. 

Of course, the media was for the most part very concerned about the icon's vanishing act; all the major outlets were abuzz with rumors and leads. However, one small group of teenagers was glad the girl had gone - they were one small group of students who she had tried to bully into despair as a test; one small group who might have been pushed over the edge, had she not conveniently disappeared. When the news hit them, they united in their vicious celebrations, and in the process became closer than ever. Every year that passed following Enoshima's disappearance marked the start of a new hope for these five teenagers - namely, the hope that she would not return. They shared in their experiences of her cruelty, laughed together, laughed at her - mocked and bullied her in death as they always wished they could have done behind her back. This was their new hope, their hatred over this girl combined with their joy over her disappearance, and it was strong enough to hold their delicate, flimsy friendships together.

And then one fateful Tuesday evening, two years after the disappearance of Junko Enoshima, everything came crashing down.

* * *

  _Kwip!_

The box around the Skype icon flicks orange with the sound, indicating that she has a new message; the red-headed photographer groans, opening the window briefly in order to let the alert fade, before minimizing it and getting back to-

_Kwip! K-Kwip!_

This groan is louder than the first, and the process of opening the window and closing it faster. A few seconds later, a new sound invades her personal space:

_Beep-ba-beep. Beep-ba-beep. Beep-ba-_

"Oh, I give up!" Koizumi mutters under her breath, and answers the Skype call. It takes a few seconds to load - she knows that a few seconds is all she needs to smile at the camera, but she's not in a very smiley mood. She scowls at the screen instead; she's already told the person on the other end multiple times now to stop irritating her, copying and pasting the usual 'Doing an assignment, leave me alone' response, but this person is as stubborn as a wild donkey. Not that Koizumi's ever _met_ a wild donkey, but this girl's at least stubborn enough that when the call connects, she actually smiles and waves. The scowl deepens, but this only seems to amuse the other girl - on the screen, her smile widens, and she's trilling in the photographer's a half-second later:

"Hey, Mahiru-chan! Is she doing anything important? Ibuki knows she was doing all kinds of super-cool stuff two minutes ago, 'cos Ibuki's got a great memory and all, buuuuut how about _now?_ "

If this had been the first time Mioda had addressed her, or the second, or even the third, Koizumi could have ignored it. In fact, she's done a marvelous job of ignoring her for approximately fifty repeats of the dreaded question, her fingers typing meaningless words mixed with snatches of the lyrics of whatever bland song was thumping in her ears. But - well, Mioda had persisted, her keening voice audible no matter how loudly the photographer played her music - or, if she wasn't harassing Koizumi over call, the constant _Kwip! Kwip! Kwip!_ schmop, only becoming worse when Mioda started sending all her messages in a distinctly syncopated rhythm.

And so it is that at the thirteenth answered call that night, and the seventy-seventh repetition of The Question, there's a loud thump of surrender, and a clatter of keys as Koizumi's forehead smacks hard into her keyboard. Random letters spew across the screen, and Mioda giggles at the reaction; it crackles with static, but it's definitely enough to get on Koizumi's nerves. "Talk about over the top, Mahiru-chan. Or rather, _on_ top, as in 'Ibuki's friend is now on top of her keyboard!' " she crows, and Koizumi scowls as best she can with her face buried in the plastic.

"I'm busy. Can't you see?"

"Mmmmmmmnnnnn", Mioda replies, drawing the sound out over the photographer's moaning. "Going off what Ibuki can see of Mahiru-chan's keyboard... Ibuki bets Mahiru-chan's been typing an awful lot of ones and zeroes! Is it some ultra-cool new code? Is Mahiru-chan gonna use it for her super-cool mystery?" 

The photographer sighs at that, looking up at the smiling visage of her classmate for a long moment before sitting up properly, her hands poised over the keys just in case Mioda's dodgy camera cuts out yet again. "It's that story I'm supposed to write. You know, the one due tomorrow? The one I've been complaining about all week?" She minimizes the Skype window, glances over at the page-full of random letters and numbers, and rubs at her temples. "...Or at least, it  _was_ that thing."

The guitarist hums some tune that Koizumi half-recognizes as having heard in an elevator. "Well, Ibuki's sure Mahiru-chan'll write a great assignment! Mahiru-chan's really keyed into what makes teenagers teenagers, since she's one and all that. Actually, um - Ibuki bets that Mahiru-chan'll have plenty of haters, maybe as many as Junko-chan, buuuuut if she just does _this_ , Ibuki can guarantee that they'll all shut up! They might even fall in love, and then Ibuki'll have to fight off all the potential suitors, and it'll be great! Soooo, Mahiru-chan had better go like  _this!_ "

At her words, Koizumi flicks back to Skype, just in time to catch Mioda pulling a ridiculous face at the camera. She can't help but smile at the sight, which makes Mioda burst out snickering after she glances down and to her right - presumably where her screen is. Koizumi knows from experience that most people tend to watch their screens more than their cameras, but the guitarist is an exception; aside from the occasional glance at her screen if something important was going on, she smiles straight at the camera. There's something almost pure about the way she sat back from her screen with her little cat-eared headset on, looking genuinely happy and attentive, somehow standing out from the vivid purples and pinks of her room behind her. Maybe it's got something to do with being trained to perform in front of cameras, but in the two years they've been Skyping each other, Mioda's never typed or otherwise multi-tasked when she's been on the videochat, unless playing her latest composition counts.

"Thanks for the tip, I guess", Koizumi mumbles when she's done laughing, and looks up at the little novelty webcam above her screen to smile at Mioda. It's not often that she does this, but her logic is something along the lines of _If I pretend I'm happy, she might just leave me alone_ , and so she does it. 

"It's no problem, Mahiru-chan!" comes the crowed response; loud enough that the photographer jumps and automatically looks about herself, in case the noise has alerted the hall monitor. They're both still in rooms at Hope's Peak, after all, where noisy behaviour is rarely tolerated at night - Koizumi has bad memories of the time a few months back when Mioda attempted to play a raucous guitar solo at around midnight, and then the photographer got to watch over blurry, pixelated webcam as the guitarist was dragged screeching out of her room by Ishimaru. In fact, no student bar an assigned roommate is allowed in anyone's room after six in the evening, in a heavy-handed attempt to make sure that rowdy parties and midnight feasts aren't an issue. 

"Keep your voice down!" Koizumi hisses. "We don't need a repeat of the whole guitar thing." She hesitates, then adds: "Anyway, I really have to work on this assignment. It's due tomorrow, and I don't think they'll be very impressed with a bunch of random letters."

She doesn't like saying that, doesn't like the thought of Mioda leaving her alone, even though having her chatting away in the earbuds is perpetually annoying. That she's almost dependent on the guitarist's presence these days is a concept that irritates her and intrigues her equally, even though she knows full well why she feels a deep yearning for the other girl; why she allows Mioda to practice her wild and completely inappropriate dating methods and pickup lines on her. They've just been through too much together for Koizumi to not feel some kind of connection to the guitarist - too much trauma, too much torture, too many bitter and tender secrets spilled in amongst the salty tears. The photographer knows all Mioda's wants and desires, just as the other girl knows hers - and more than anything, each craves understanding, understanding that they know the other person can provide, since they know so much about each other.

Almost  _too_ much.

"Ehhhh, tomorrow never comes!" Mioda trills, her grin going a little wider when she notices that down and to her right, Koizumi's returning the gesture. "And, _besides_ \- Mahiru-chan's super-stuck for ideas, right? She oughta try out a real fantasy with Ibuki, that'll give her a heap of stuff to work with! Ibuki's sure she's got that chainmail bikini around somewhere!" 

A shudder goes through the photographer at that. "I, uh - um, I really don't think those ideas would be what my teacher would want to read about...?" 

But Mioda's already thrown off her headset and clicked off the call, leaving Koizumi with nothing but static in her ears and rather a lot of conflicted feelings in her heart. It's not that she _doesn't_ love the guitarist - she loves the other girl with all her heart. It just feels a little awkward to love her, for the rational and the irrational are an unlikely pair indeed - when Enoshima picked the two of them out to be the first of their cohort to despair, even her most calculating of personalities hadn't counted on their holding onto each others' hopes. Yet somehow, they had ended up that way, closer than friends - throughout that awful, awful year, in which the fashionista had sought to take everything from them and fill the myriad holes with her own despair, Mioda was there for Koizumi, and Koizumi was there for Mioda. Every day had been their torture, but every night they had reminded each other of their lost hopes and dreams over Skype, smiled and cried to their webcams in equal terms. Theirs was a relationship forged in fire and brimstone, and Koizumi knows it'll last no matter what.

Or at least, she hopes that it'll last no matter what - Mioda _is_ the photographer's hope, in a twisted sort of way, and she knows the sentiment is returned, especially given how the guitarist is constantly trying to push their romance forwards. Koizumi's wary of it, of course, preferring her advances to be gentle and overly rational, a careful game of courting - but the guitarist is on occasion enthusiastic enough to drag her into a passionate making-out session that leaves her cheeks red, her neck smeared with blue lipstick. Sometimes, she even insists on holding Koizumi's hand for the day - and it's not that the photographer isn't comfortable with it, or isn't enjoying it, but she can't help but wish that Mioda was a little less aggressive, a little less of the opinion that they could die at any minute. For one thing, they're in a perfectly safe school environment, and for another - if their love can survive Enoshima's torture, Koizumi's sure it can survive not making out  _quite_ so passionately whenever the bell for the end of the day goes.

_Beep-ba-beep. Beep-ba-beep._

The noise startles her, and it's with a distinct hesitation and a very heavy heart that she answers. Once again, Mioda's trying to push their relationship, this time by wearing very little - once again, she's attempting to violate all Koizumi's careful courting habits with emotions raw and passionate. If Koizumi's especially unlucky, Mioda might even decide to violate her own dignity in the name of love - she tries to push that thought away, of course, but it lingers in the back of her mind while the video feed jitters and pixelates, trying to fix itself. 

"Okay, so Ibuki couldn't find the chainmail bikini!" Mioda shouts in her ear, and there is both relief and horror at the statement. The cursor promptly goes over the red disconnect button, just in case the other girl happens to be... well, 'skyclad', as Tanaka might say.

"Well, what _are_ you weari- oh, never mind." The video feed coughs to life; thankfully, Mioda's clothed, though she appears to be wearing a fluffy devil onesie that is a neon enough shade of red to stop traffic if ever she went outside. Her hair horns poke out through holes in the hood, pointy enough to put even the ridiculous black cloth horns on the onesie to shame. 

"It's late, so Ibuki figured she'd better put on her pyjamas! They have a fantasy theme, yeah? Sooooo, Mahiru-chan can totally write about an demon who doesn't wear Prada, they're hot and hip enough to go wearing a fire-engine red onesie!" As usual, she grins at the camera as she gushes, and as usual, Koizumi sighs. It's just like Mioda to be flirtatious when the photographer doesn't expect it, and to be quite innocent when she does-

_Beep-ba-beep. Beep-ba-beep._

"Ooooh!" the guitarist giggles as the noise continues like a distant siren; it's irritating, but the guitarist's voice easily floats over the top of it. "Looks like the others wanna talk in that Skype group of theirs! And just for once, it's not awkward or random at all and totally makes sense in the context of the story! You go, author! Maybe Ibuki can get a hat trick out of this!"

_Beep-ba-beep. Beep-ba-beep._

Koizumi blinks, looking from her screen to her camera and back again. She's not used to group calls due to the inherent chaos of everyone talking at once, and she's especially not used to group calls involving one Teruteru Hanamura - a bloke who is utterly suggestive when he means to be, which is about ninety percent of the time. For all she knows, he might consider this group chat an excuse to have a one-two-three- actually, a  _five-_ way, which she'd definitely not be interested in. She loves Mioda, yes, but she's a very one-person-per-romance-type of girl, even if her girlfriend of sorts routinely crushes on the hottest guy of the week. "Just calling us like that... It seems pretty random to me. Why do they _all_ want to talk to us - and tonight of all nights?" 

_Beep-ba-beep. Beep-ba-beep._

"Whaaaaat, Mahiru-chan doesn't know?!? That's terrible! It's the second anniversary since evil ol' Junko-chan went away forever and ever! That means Ibuki and all her friends have gotta party hard, at least over Skype!"

Another full year of freedom? Has it really been that long since she went through hell and came out with Mioda at her shoulder? Has she really survived that long?

 _Yes, I have,_ she thinks to herself - and she's tearing up when she answers, but she's smiling.  _We made it. We all made it. We survived Junko Enoshima._

_Beep-ba-beep. Beep-ba-_

An odd silence. 

"Hello?"

_click-_

"-oked damn good in that  _heeeeeey!_ " Souda's voice is the first to come crackling into her earbuds, perhaps because he's the person who set up everyone's Skypes and equipment in the first place - Koizumi's not entirely sure on that one. He sounds startled that she and Mioda have come barging into the chat, as startled as if Koizumi had come storming personally into his room. His feed's the first to load, too; the photographer has to hide a smirk as the pink-haired mechanic in the ill-fitting yellow jumpsuit leaps into a standing position, hurriedly looks into the camera lens for courtesy's sake, then he trips on an errant cord, something goes  _crunch_ and the video feed flicks between at least six different views of him lying prone. He gets up almost as quickly as he hit the ground, raising one hand to the camera in a clumsy salute. "Koizumi! You're - ah, um, I was just saying how great your... profile picture looked? S-since we haven't seen each other for ages, you know, being in different maths classes and all?"

"I saw you _yesterday"_ , she points out, and there's a raucous burst of laughter from Mioda at that.

"You've gotta admit it, Kazuichi-chaaaan - she's got you there!"

Hanamura's video loads before his audio does, so there's several silent seconds from his end in which he pulls off a flourishing, silent bow, slightly stiff in his neat black suit, saying something as he does so. Koizumi quietly wishes that his audio would never load, because Hanamura's gestures make him look far more like a gentleman than his words tend to, and contemplates the mute button, but eventually the chef's speech is audible. "-hhh, to be gotten by a girl! My dearest Souda, you're a lucky, _lucky_  man!" 

Souda's face goes red enough that he mutters something utterly incoherent and swaps the camera to a view of the back of his head; naturally, Mioda just about howls with laughter, her head dropping below the camera's field of vision at one point. Hanamura is of course giving a very colourful commentary about the group being 'down on the floor, like I perpetually am', and though Nidai seems to be having more than a few issues with his camera going off all the yelling, he too eventually appears, after enough minutes have passed for Mioda to really kick into gear and start chatting up both Hanamura and Souda. Koizumi might have been jealous at her behaviour, but she's used to it now - the guitarist's always been a flirt with others, it's just her way. So long as Koizumi's the only one she actually commits to loving, the photographer couldn't care less about how many nosebleeds Mioda coaxes out of Hanamura.

Sure enough, there's a scream on the line a few minutes later, a snicker from Souda and a tutting from Nidai, and Koizumi just smiles, shaking her head and averting her gaze from Hanamura's camera so she won't wind up seeing the damage. She's quiet in these sorts of chats, since she never really knows how loud she ought to be with them, or how far behind she's lagging behind - so Mioda yammers on about some new internet meme no-one's ever heard of, Hanamura gets back from changing out of his now bloodied black suit into a chef's uniform and talks all about how hard it is to wake up for five am starts in the kitchen, Nidai promotes the latest gym regime, and Koizumi just sits quietly and looks between each of their little boxes, drinking in the wonderful, wonderful truth of their meeting.

Somehow, despite everything, all five of them are somehow - _somehow_ - safe, alive, and non-despairing.

Koizumi smiles at the camera for a moment there, and it's genuine - then she quietly opens the Word document back up, hoping to get some work done while the others chat. And, for a little while, she manages quite well. The others natter on about who's dating who, and did anyone see Saionji's performance in the school's inaugural talent show, and - gosh, Enoshima treated us horribly back in those awful, awful days. Sometimes the conversation goes quiet due to someone's video feed temporarily cutting out, in which case the teenagers all move back to text-based chatting. Koizumi is sure to glance at the Skype window every now and then during these silences, so she doesn't miss-

_Kwip!_

_Huh-?_

_'Not just you',_ she types.  _'I see it too'_

There's enough of the others typing all at once for Skype to temporarily give up on the whole 'so-and-so is typing' thing; it just says 'Mioda and others are typing'. Their responses come all at once, flooding the chat for a second before the teenagers all swap to the video chat to express their irritation and worry.

 _'What am i_ looking at?!?" Souda wails, due to his tendency of shouting out things shortly after he's typed them. "There's like - seven of us in the chat! And one of them doesn't have an avatar or anything!"

"Nice description, Kazuichi-chaaaan!" Mioda chimes in. "That'll win the author review about how sweet the dialogue was for _years_ to come!"

"This is... strange", Nidai notes. "Why does this mysterious person not identify themselves immediately?" His usual gung-ho nature seems to be gone for once; he's tense and alert, leaning forwards on his chair.

"M-maybe they're a robot?" Hanamura asks, his gaze fixated on his screen instead of his camera. "The things robots can do nowdays is truly staggering. Why, just the other day I discovered online a rather fine item that could-"

"H-halt it right there!" Souda whines over the top of him, and Koizumi cringes a little; the chat really can get so loud when they're all talking at once. "Stop it, I mean. I don't think I really wanna know about whatever ya saw, yeah?"

"Ibuki says we should talk to Anon-chan, yeah! Like, um, ask them who they are, and if they're not anyone nice, kick 'em-?"

_Kwip!_

XXXX: I'm sorry, bastards

_XXXX is typing..._

XXXX: but you cant do that.

Koizumi blinks, right-clicking on the empty Skype avatar -

\- and sure enough, the little option to kick XXXX from the chat is greyed out.

Something like fear goes through her at that realization.

For suddenly, very suddenly, what little power she thought she might have had over the internet has been taken from her.

It'sSoudaNotSoda: Damn, they're right.

Teruteru Hanamayhem: No way!

Ibuki: Yes way!

_No, they can't have possibly__

_No, they can'__

_No, th__

_I suppose i__

Mahiru-chan: I suppose it's possible??? 

_XXXX is typing..._

XXXX: Let's play a game.

 


	2. Argue

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> (gonna raise your voices high)

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Heads up for the format going haywire, I guess! The idea is that it's supposed to imitate the constant multitasking you see when you're switching between text and video and typing all at once, without getting so busy that it gets nasty on the eyes. It’s pretty intuitive, and you've all seen it a little in the previous chapter, but here’s a key in case you can’t follow it:
> 
> Left = regular narration combined with dialogue from the video-chat.
> 
> Middle = what Koizumi is typing, though only if it's different to what she actually says in the chat (ie something she types and then re–words or deletes). On occasion, it's also used to indicate sound effects.
> 
> Right = what Koizumi and other characters are saying over chat-text.

"Um, so before Ibuki goes ahead and agrees to a bunch of probably totes deadly game rules - who _are_ you, Thingy-chan?!? That's a lot of X's there, too many for even Ibuki to pronounce! Thingy–chan sure is dastardly!" 

Mioda is of course the first to panic openly about their uninvited guest, in the sense that she actually starts yelling at her camera. Koizumi wishes she could have put an arm around her and told her that everything was going to be just fine, but she can't quite do it - not when she didn't know for certain that everything would be okay. All she can do is open up her private chat with the guitarist, and type to her girlfriend instead, praying that the odd stalker in the other chat won't realize what she’s doing. Her fingers dance frantically on the keys anyway, and she finds herself holding her breath as she types, glancing at the camera as though she can somehow reach into it and rescue Mioda from this situation.

Mahiru-chan: Don't worry about this.

Mahiru-chan: If it gets bad, we can just

_run away together__

_run awa__

_r__

It's too cheesy and too grim, all at once. She can't do it.

_Mahiru-chan is typing..._

Mahiru-chan: turn off our computers.

_Ibuki is typing..._

_Kwip!_

Koizumi jumps at the ominous sound, and the orange flash that accompanies it; something has been typed in the other chat, though she doesn’t know what it is or who it’s from. She can hear Souda’s little gasp in her ear, though, and she certainly hears Nidai’s roar of outrage.

_KrsssshhhayakakarohshiiiiiiieeeeEEMPH–_

And so, with a noise that's something like that, something goes down with a crash on one end of the connection, and she hurriedly switches back to see what damage has been caused, to read whatever has been said to cause the commotion. The buffering isn’t just irritating for her any more – it’s distinctly worrying her, her cursor dancing anxiously across the screen with every new thump and crash _(Heeyumph! Kmph! Katackatackaknf!)._

But when the chat finally manages to load, she’s left all the more worried. Nidai is missing from his webcam, and Hanamura is scrambling back into frame, his face very pale indeed. "H–hey now–! Th–there's no need to go hitting things all of a sudden! I hit on enough things for all of us already!" he's whining, but the photographer barely registers his words over the general chaos; after all, what is now visible in the chat box is far, far worse than his concerns about the noise.

XXXX: I’m not going to kill any of you for no reason, that’s just boring.

XXXX: I mean, haven't you seen like every horror flick ever? Boooooring.

XXXX: But I really wouldn’t bother trying to leave!

XXXX: I mean, your doors are all locked.

XXXX: You can all test that, if you like~

Koizumi thinks several words as she finally registers what must be going on, glancing over at the blinking red light on her door's electronic lock. Thankfully for her dignity, she does not type any of those words – or anything else, for that matter, preferring to quietly accept the situation. She knows as well as any of the others that their doors have always been electronic affairs; if this odd hacker figure has broken into the systems that open and close their doors, then they’re pretty much trapped in their own rooms due to a general lack of windows. It’s nothing new – in fact, it’s an act which she remembers from when Chihiro lost a bet last summer – but however familiar it is, it unnerves her all the same.

_Hfff... Haaa... Ch–chaaaarge!_

_GraahhhhknufknufnaknaknaknakakakakaKOOM!_

_Tch..._

Perhaps it’s because she’s unable to put a friendly face behind this particular action – actually, it must be that, it can’t be anything else – and that’s when the truth hits the photographer, hard enough to leave her trembling and shivering before her own camera. In this age where information is a seemingly limitless source, where the answers to a thousand, thousand questions are a single Google search away, the unknown is perhaps the most frightening thing of all.

_H–h... hiii... hiiiiiiyaaaaaaaarrrrrrr..._

_It’s okay,_ Koizumi tells herself, over the long, drawn–out thing that's not quite a scream, yet not quite a roar; something broken and desperate. _The whole door thing’s just a gimmick, right? This person... They don’t know anything about us, not really. They’re trying to make us all think that they’ve got some kind of power over us, that’s all this whole being trapped thing’s about. The teachers have the master keycards, so they... they can just get out tomorrow. And if anything goes really wrong, we could always just call one now._ The more she reasons it out, the safer she feels. There’s something comforting about the logic, just as there has always been something comforting about it.

It'sSoudaNotSoda: The hell're we gonna do?!?  
We're kinda sorta totally boned here!

TeruteruHanamayhem: Boned is about right.

TeruteruHanamayhem is typing...

Ibuki: Two off–colour comments in one night  
is more than enough Hanamayhem for Ibuki!

_Tch! Rmph. Shhhf. Shhhf. Shhhf. 'Kay. One, two, three–_

"I–Ibuki's all for trying, but someone really needs to stop N–Nekomaru–chan, before he goes and–!"

_FmphfmphfmphrrrrrnnnnnrrrrrmphaaRRRRRRRAAAAAAAA–_

"Ouch, that... that sure didn't look healthy. Like, at _all._ "

“Everyone, just _shut up!_ ” she shouts over the wailing and the crashing. Nidai doesn’t hear her since going off the sound and the blur on the webcam, he's just charged headlong at his door, but Hanamura's mouth closes with a snap loud enough for his microphone to pick up. Koizumi cringes, then goes on: “S–so, uh... They’ve locked the doors. It’s no big deal, right? I mean, the school will just come along and break us out in the morning.” She glares into her camera, trying to look as brave as she can, even though she's shaking almost as much as Mioda is, cowering back from her own screen much like Souda's doing. “Hey. Listen to me, X–”

“X–X–X–X, actually! Ibuki's not stammering 'cos she's scared or anything – X–X–Four–chan's even more X–rated than X–rated things!”

“–anyway, whoever you are – it's going to take much more than one little lock problem to get us down. We've–"

"–all been through hell and back, yeah?" Souda interrupts, flapping his arms about as though this will make him look larger and therefore more intimidating. He's skinny enough that the effort looks more like the last resort of a drowning spider, but the situation is tense enough that no–one snickers. "And I'm talking about real hell, y'know – not like the one that stupid Tanaka guy's always waffling on about. So, what I'm sayin' is – if you think for a second that locking our doors is about to scare us, you had better think again!”

Koizumi nods agreement, and over on his camera, Hanamura claps and wolf–whistles. “Bravo, bravo! Now, Koizumi... Take a nice, big bow in that short skirt of yours, and the performance should be just perfect!”

Koizumi decides to ignore the latter statement, and instead looks back at the little text box, trying not to smile. She fails after a few seconds of a very brave attempt – she knows that she’s won the argument here, even Mioda knows it if the giggling means anything (though then again, the giggling could have something to do with the whole drowning spider thing discussed earlier). No–one, not even the at–times–completely–illogical Mioda, could possibly refute such a strong–yet–perfectly–balanced argument like that – right?

_Right!_

_XXXX is typing..._

_XXXX is typing..._

_...Right?_

_XXXX is typing..._

“What’s he doin’, typing a speech or something?” Souda drawls, rolling his eyes at either the screen or one of his other cameras; it’s difficult to tell which one it is. “At this rate, Nidai’ll give up on the door before that guy’s written out his whole sheba–”

XXXX: I didn’t mean to make you despair just by locking your doors

XXXX: The trapping always comes first.

XXXX: despair comes later

_Despair?!?_

_Despair? You sound like__

_Despair? Yo__

_De__

ItsSoudaNotSoda: WHAAAAAAA

Ibuki: No waaaaaay

Teruteru Hanamayhem: Yes way!

Teruteru Hanamayhem: I mean, no way, but

Teruteru Hanamayhem: I'd totally swing Mioda's way

Mahiru–chan: oh god

The photographer's not sure if Hanamura's trying to lighten the mood or is just being his very–much–uncharming self – he certainly looks pleased with his wit/lack thereof – but Souda at least snickers at the comment, even as Mioda shakes her head in disbelief. Koizumi flashes a rare smile at the camera, just to show that she's of the opinion that they're all joking around; and with the once grim conversation rather effectively derailed, it's almost genuine.

_Keep up the jokes, guys. It'll tick off Eno__

_Keep joking, gu__

_K__

But she can't do it; can't type the dreaded name of the one who tortured her for a good three years, can't admit that Enoshima might be back to torture them all once more. She doesn't even want to believe that this odd hacker is somehow vaguely connected to that girl and her sick, twisted ways, but she knows too that the use of the word 'despair' cannot have been a coincidence – whoever this person is, they want to cause the same sort of stress and pain that Enoshima put them through. And so Mahiru Koizumi stares at the screen, her gaze almost as empty as the text box, trying to find some level of comfort in the wide variety of silly faces Mioda's pulling at her right now ("Which one does Mahiru–chan reckon is the _most_ disgusted Ibuki face?").

"The door is indeed locked!" Nidai proclaims, finally slinking back into view on his monitor and sitting down with a _thump_ almost as loud as the complete thumping he was giving the door earlier; the chair creaks and whines in protest, and Mioda winces a moment afterwards. "Even for someone like me, there's no escape!" he goes on, as oblivious as ever. "I doubt even Owari would be able to break through." There's a pause as he scrolls through his messages, then scowls and says the very word the others have all been trying very hard not to. "Enoshima! I thought you had disappeared. Show yourself, so that I can punch you with the full spirit of my four colleagues!"

“I–I don’t think I want anyone punching my spirit!” Souda yells, and Hanamura mutters something about hitting up the ladies with a strong drink. Thankfully, the exact words are lost to Koizumi in the loud static noises; though she guesses off Mioda’s reaction (bristling, curling her lip, pointing at her camera, flipping back the hood of her onesie to give the camera the full benefit of her _Caring–A–Lot–About–Your–Opinion Stare_ ) that whatever he’d said was misogynistic enough to make even the guitarist very upset.

“Oi, Teruteru–chan! Even Ibuki reckons–”

_Kwip!_

XXXX: Ohh dear, looks like you’re already fighting~

XXXX: <http://i62.tinypic.com/2pt3swi.png>

XXXX: My, my. We haven’t even started the game yet!

Following a short silence during which they all click on the proffered link, Hanamura starts shrieking like a banshee, albeit one with a very strong, rough accent. He says something while he's at it, red–faced in the heat of his own rant, but Koizumi can't put together the exact words; it's all apostrophes and garbled contractions like _wh'hellyodoin'_ and _sh'uldacouldasonofa._ Souda jumps so badly that he pulls out something on his end, screeching as he does so. “Wh–wh–wh–whaaaaAAAAA–” he begins, then there’s a loud, startled sound–

_(Krrrlip!)_

–then a burst of static–

_(Krshshsskkiieeeoousshh!)_

– and then his camera feed shuts off altogether.

 _(Thweeeup.)_

Koizumi glances over at Mioda, hoping against hope that it’s all some terrible mistake, something taken out of context – to her, just about anything’s better than what XXXX wants them all to think. The stress is clearly getting to the guitarist; the girl’s actually watching her screen instead of her camera for once, eyes wide and frightened. “I... I didn’t... _Ibuki_ didn’t–!” she stammers, then the meaning of Souda’s abrupt departure from the camera feed seems to hit her; to convince everyone of her innocence, she needs to type from now on, or Souda won’t believe her; won't hear anything she's saying. She promptly hunches over her keyboard, typing away with what look suspiciously like tears in her eyes, though it's difficult to tell due to the frequent pixilation of her video feed.

_Mioda?!? Wh–what in the world..._

_Teruteru Hanamayhem and Ibuki are typing..._

Ibuki: Didn’t do it! You’ve gotta believe

Teruteru Hanamayhem: YOU’RE NAME’S ONNIT GDI

Mahiru–chan: I’m sure it’s just some mistake...

Ibuki: in the heart of the cards, actually

Teruteru Hanamayhem: R U KIDDIN ME

_Ahdun’care’bout–hff–anyofthi’yastupidijitsm’god–hff–_

_(and other assorted screaming noises)_

_Bip!_

“The _hell_ were you thinking, Mioda?!?” Souda has finally fixed whatever happened to his camera feed; his words come cracking like a whip in the once–silent chat, and they’re loud enough to make Mioda jump and hastily look into her camera. There’s definitely tears now – Koizumi can see them smudging her black eyeliner a little, shimmering against her foundation – but Mioda doesn’t seem to care, or at least she doesn’t attempt to wipe them away. Staring at her accusers, staring at her silent, helpless girlfriend, she types, never even once glancing down at her keyboard.

_Ibuki is typing..._

Teruteru Hanamayhem: MIODA.

Teruteru Hanamayhem: DELETE.

Teruteru Hanamayhem: POST.

Teruteru Hanamayhem: NOW.

Nekomaru Nidai: You missed a ‘the’.

_Ibuki is typing..._

XXXX: Oooh, found another! <http://imgur.com/LvsBd8l>

Teruteru Hanamayhem: ASDFGHJKLIUDAKBUISIUS FXH ALF _JESUS_

Ibuki: How can Ibuki delete the status when  
she didn’t put it up in the first place?

Ibuki: ^statuss???

Ibuki: ^statuses

Teruteru Hanamayhem: TAKE UR STPID X_X UNCULTURD TASTES

_I... I have to do something–!_

Teruteru Hanamayhem: AND GEE-TEE-EFF-OFF THIS PLANET K???  _K!_  

_I can’t let the others just... go at her, like this!_

Ibuki: But there's only one planet! Ibuki can't leave!

It'sSoudaNotSoda: Well,  _actually..._

 _Even if that XXXX person’s right and all,  even if she posted all that, I... I have to–!_  

Mahiru–chan: Everyone, try to stay calm!

Mahiru–chan: That XXXX thing is just

_Trying to turn us against each other__

Teruteru Hanamayhem: DELETE. THOSE. STATUSES.

_Making us fight__

XXXX: This just gets better and better! <http://imgur.com/qMSObcq>

XXXX: Or... is that worse and worse?

_Downright evil__

Nekomaru Nidai: _Mioda!_ I did not know you  
harboured such ill feelings!

Koizumi sighs as the arguing goes on and on, messages swarming across her screen like angry bees. Would the nice, friendly guitarist really have sent out statuses as horrible as those? Or was their uninvited guest somehow behind it all? Either option is nasty – Koizumi doesn’t want to believe that her girlfriend is a monster, but nor does she want to believe that this ‘XXXX’ person has the ability to hack into huge online corporations for the sole purpose of making a bunch of statuses and so turning the group’s members on each other. If the latter is the case, then Koizumi knows for sure that the unknown lurker behind that blank Skype avatar is something far more powerful than they are – and she definitely doesn’t want to wind up believing–

 _Ah–? AaaaaaaiiiiIIEEEEEEEEE!_ _EEEEEEYYAAAAAIII! YAIAIAIAIIAIAAAAAAAAAACK-_

__Thweeeup.__

_Ibuki has left the chat._

Koizumi snaps to attention at Mioda’s screaming, hurriedly checking the chat to see what’s gone and happened now. Within seconds, the others have gone and filled it with worried messages, just as the photographer’s headphones are currently filled with their upset and startled reactions to whatever the hell’s happened to Mioda. Normally, she’d try to speak in a group chat only when it’s quiet enough for the others to hear her without her shouting, but she loved Mioda – still loves her, she can’t bear to think of her in the past tense so soon. And here in the moment, she’s terrified enough of whatever fate might have befallen her girlfriend that finds herself adding to the mess with her own questions, all being worried enough to come out completely garbled.

Nekomaru Nidai: What’s going on?!? Why did she leave?!?

“M–maybe she just accidentally...”

_...kshshshrrkrkrkrrhhshhsshrrr..._

Mahiru–chan: Maybe we should

_call the police__

_call th__

Mahiru–chan: try adding her again?

“Th’hell s’up wifthi?!? Sh–she jus’ wen’ righ’–!”

It’sSoudaNotSoda: Uh... I guess I’ll give it a shot?

_XXXX is typing..._

And just like that, there is a terrible, final silence.

_XXXX is typing..._

And just like that, Koizumi realizes something that sends shivers down her spine, makes her look away from the screen for a long moment in something resembling submission.

_XXXX is typing..._

_We’re... not fighting the idea that they’re in power, are we–?_

_We’re **expecting** them to be in power._

_XXXX has added Ibuki to the chat._

XXXX: Sorry about that.

_Hfff... hffff..._

XXXX: Got bored.

Ibuki: ...It’s fine.

Mioda pants at her computer screen, her head down and shoulders shaking.

Ibuki: I'm fine.

She is not fine.

Ibuki: Everything'll be fine.

She is lying, even worse than usual; make-up running down her cheeks.

_XXXX is typing..._

Souda swallows. Hanamura whines. Nidai clicks his tongue, Koizumi stares hopelessly– 

_XXXX is typing..._

-and yet, and yet, _somehow_ \- it's a Skype chat, they can all speak and hear each other, and yet no–one says a word.

_XXXX is typing..._

For none of them dare interrupt the one with all the answers.

_Kwip!_

XXXX: Very good. You all pass.

XXXX: So, let’s start playing for realsies, mmmn?

XXXX: But first, a quick word from the chatterbox!

XXXX: <http://i57.tinypic.com/20h6v5.png> 


	3. Fight

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> (give me your all)

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Warning for an implied stabbing, though no actual blood or details are shown. To be honest, the line's about as informative in terms of the target/location/details as if I just wrote 'stab-stab' and said nothing more, but if you're at all triggered by violence, there's your warning.

_"Junko Enoshima_ likes–" Souda begins, then puts a fist in his mouth and bites down, tearing up when he chomps too hard.

"H–how... what kind of sick person would..." Hanamura mumbles, but he never finishes either, staring emptily and open–mouthed at the screencap. Whether it's Enoshima behind the move or not, _someone's_ used her account to like Mioda's post – meaning that either their attacker is a very powerful hacker, or the master of despair herself is related to the current situation. Both options are severely messed–up, and both are made all the worse by the uncertainty and mystery surrounding XXXX.

XXXX: Sooo, now we're past the icebreaker –  
 the rules! Gotta keep things moving.

_XXXX is typing..._

But Koizumi desperately doesn't want to know whatever twisted rules the blank Skype avatar has in store for them – to the point where only the sight of the very much distraught Mioda keeps her watching her screen. Locked in her own room, she can't get to her girlfriend to comfort her in person; can't walk away from this horror–show for fear of losing her altogether. All she can do is flick over to the private chat in the hope of delaying her finding out about the rules that way, type into it, and pray that the panting, shuddering Mioda is still okay, pray she's not been somehow hurt.

But as much as she types, she never seems to actually send Mioda anything; however hard she tries to sound sincere, it feels like she's a world away from the guitarist. She spends a good few minutes messing around in the private chat, trying to figure out which question would be best to ask the other girl first – _what happened? are you okay? why are you so upset?_   – but all of her questions seem to be too blunt, too likely to make Mioda snap under the extra stress, and so that enter key is never touched.

_Do you know who__

_Do you know__

_Do you know why__

_Kwip!_

But then she's out of time; the Skype icon on her toolbar flares orange, the sound makes her jump a little. She hastily clicks back over to see what more the stalker has in store for them.

XXXX: 1. From this point on – if you log off,  
leave, stop playing, or try to get help

XXXX: you die.

XXXX: Hecking enter key, I tell you.

This rule makes sense – far too much sense, enough sense to get a soft, swiftly–choked whine out of her. It's not audible over the racket Souda and Hanamura manage to kick up between them, which when combined with Nidai yelling at them to stop panicking is loud enough that Koizumi turns down her volume a few notches. But – well, it's _there_ , and the fact that the photographer made such an undignified noise is signal enough that she's starting to break under the stress. Koizumi would love to think that whoever's behind that chat is insane to the point where they hadn't thought any of their plan through, but the fact that is that this first rule will keep her and her friends trapped, even if they refuse to play  whatever sick game their torturer has in mind. Try as she might, the photographer can't see a way out that doesn't involve doing any of the things XXXX mentioned a few seconds ago – aside from perhaps a suicide, which would understandably defeat the purpose of the whole 'trying–to–escape–alive' thing.

_First they'll trap us. Check. And, next they said they'd make us..._

_XXXX is typing..._

No, nothing can make them despair. Maybe someone could have tipped them over the edge once upon a time, but – not now, not after how hard Junko tried just two years ago, after how well everyone recovered from it. They know the tricks to getting someone into despair too well to fall for them all over again, so surely, _surely–!_

XXXX: 2. Once started, the game doesn't  
end until either we run out of fingers,  
or I say it's ended.

"R–run out of fingers?!? I–Ibuki might be harmless, but she's not armless, or even fingerless–!"

But Mioda's panicked outburst says otherwise, Souda's pale, frightened face says otherwise, the way Hanamura grits his teeth and shifts uncomfortably in his seat says otherwise, the way Nidai hasn't said a word despite his loud nature says otherwise. The photographer tries not to let it show, but she's just as stressed as they are; just as trapped, just as frightened, just as close to the edge. Koizumi can imagine all too well what they'll be like after round after never–ending round of a horrible, despairing game, and though her imagination's got nothing on Mioda's, the images make her cringe all the same.

_Kwip!_

And for a single, fleeting moment, the ominous sound drives all thought out of her head. Mioda is trying to talk to her, trying to say something without speaking to the others – perhaps it's something personal, or something that stalker's told her not to say, but either way it's likely to be important. Koizumi inhales sharply; with a single click, the orange alert is gone, leaving her to drink in the message without distraction.

Ibuki: Listen to me. This is important.

_'Me'?_

Mahiru–chan: Mioda, are you okay???

_Ibuki is typing..._

Ibuki: I'm fine, but

Mahiru–chan: You're not fine! You're  
shaking and panting and terrified and

_not typing right__

Ibuki: There's something u need to  
know

_Ibuki is typing..._

_Kwip!_

Koizumi sees Mioda's shoulders sag as the new notification appears, and quite rightfully so; they both know that if they want to keep XXXX in a 'not–killing–anyone' sort of state, they ought to stop talking behind their back and pay attention to what the anonymous bully has to say, no matter how important their own subject of conversation is. And indeed, the guitarist stops typing, her shoulders slumping; Koizumi even sees her biting her lip in a rare show of submission. The photographer hesitates at the sight – she desperately wants to be that perfect, comforting girlfriend for once, tell Mioda to ignore the danger because everything will be just fine with Koizumi around. But the sad truth is that she's not there for the guitarist, not when she's not even in the same room and all she can do is type meaningless words, and so she bows her head, and flicks back to the main chat.

XXXX: 3. If you lose the game, you  
die.  
XXXX: Cheating or quitting is treated  
 the same as losing, btw.

"Um..." Mioda raises her hand over the commotion that is the boys in the chat at present, flashing a shaky smile at Koizumi – no, just her _camera_ – before she goes on. "Is X–rated–chan gonna, like... Explain the game to Ibuki and her friends? 'Cos otherwise, Ibuki might cheat or not play without meaning to, and it'd be a total waste of X–rated–chan's time!"

"D–don't you get it?!?" Souda wails. "They're just gonna kill us willy–nilly, like we're in a B–rated slasher movie or something! Th–they might shove a hair straightener up your nose for some reason, or make Hanamura eat all of his kitchen equipment, an' then go make a meme out of it while they're at it!"

"Fool!" Nidai growls, as usual settling on the worst part of Souda's argument to pick to bits. "Hanamura could never eat all of his kitchen equipment! Chubby he may be, but I doubt that his small stomach would have room for the smallest of blenders, let alone a coffee machine!"

"Firs' she goes an' mocks ma cookin'–"

"Ibuki never did that!"

_XXXX is typing..._

"–an' now _you're_ gonna go 'head an' hate on ma app'tite an'quipment?!?" Hanamura shakes a fist angrily at his webcam, oblivious to the fact that XXXX is indeed typing. The others have gone very quiet at the reminder that their stalker is very much active and watching them, but the chef just carries on, his voice carrying easily in the quiet – almost comical in his heavily accented ignorance. "Put 'em up, put 'em up–"

"Do you _want_ to get your head stuffed in a blender?!? No? Well, shut it!" Koizumi snarls, snapping at him out of fear for his safety. She doesn't like Hanamura, she certainly doesn't like him in the light of everything he's screamed at Mioda so far, but – well, she doesn't exactly want him to be torn apart. He's a human much like everyone else, and even more importantly, he's a member of the small, elite group that held firm against Junko's torture. If she loses him, if the group loses them, they'll all suffer for it; they might even despair because of it.

XXXX: Ughhhhhh. Kids.

XXXX: Rules first, fighting later. K?

_XXXX is typing..._

He's gotten off the hook thanks to her, but there's no elation from Hanamura, and certainly no congratulations from the others. Nidai stares at his screen as intently as ever, but one by one, the rest of them each find something interesting to look at on the floor, each quietly waiting for XXXX to finish their summary of the rules. Even Mioda pulls her hood back up over her head and hunkers down in a show of avoidance; Koizumi might normally have muttered something about how distracting it is when she does that on camera, but instead she takes a shuddering breath, trying to keep herself calm. If she goes off at someone a second time, things far worse than an awkward silence might follow.

XXXX: So. Own Up or Get Wrecked.

XXXX: I'll ask "Who here's done this?"

XXXX: And if that's you, you own up.

XXXX: But if no–one owns up, or someone  
 pretends they did it when they didn't, I'll  
spin the punishment wheel!

XXXX: [http://wheeldecide.com/d.e.s.p.a.i.r](http://wheeldecide.com/index.php?c1=Mioda+%281%29&c2=Mioda+%282%29&c3=Mioda+%283%29&c4=Mioda+%284%29&c5=Mioda+%285%29&c6=Koizumi+%281%29&c7=Koizumi+%282%29&c8=Koizumi+%283%29&c9=Koizumi+%284%29&c10=Koizumi+%285%29&c11=Souda+%281%29&c12=Souda+%282%29&c13=Souda+%283%29&c14=Souda+%284%29&c15=Souda+%285%29&c16=Nidai+%281%29&c17=Nidai+%282%29&c18=Nidai+%283%29&c19=Nidai+%284%29&c20=Nidai+%285%29&c21=Hanamura+%281%29&c22=Hanamura+%282%29&c23=Hanamura+%283%29&c24=Hanamura+%284%29&c25=Hanamura+%285%29&c26=No-one&c27=&t=d.e.s.p.a.i.r&col=wof&time=8&width=&cols=&tcol=&x=186&y=29) 

XXXX: 1's the least painful, 5's the worst.

XXXX: If you're the one who gets punished,  
I'll PM you what to wreck. And if you don't  
do it, you die. Soooo, better do it!

There's an expectant pause here, and a stunned silence from the chat; quite rightfully so, for these rules are nothing short of horrifying. Worse still, Koizumi can see the underlying logic behind the move. XXXX is clearly planning to turn the group on itself with the questions, have them drag themselves into despair without the need for whipping or chaining or torturing. The punishment mechanic isn't some mere 'don't confess and I'll kill you' threat, it's a roll of the dice that'll most likely see someone wrongly condemned, wrongly broken, left to nurse a new grudge against the one who caused their breaking. The rest will of course call for justice when they see the suffering of the innocent, and Koizumi guesses that some of them will be left with grudges when justice never arrives, grudges intended to fracture the group even further.

But more than having to watch the innocent break their bones or die, the most horrifying thing about the scenario is that this is a plan that she can see _working._

XXXX: Uh... That's all the rules, btw. Simple  
game for simple–minded bastards!

Another of Junko's favourite words, another term that makes Koizumi fidget awkwardly, makes her right–click again and again on XXXX's avatar in a futile attempt to block them, kick them from the chat – anything to make them go away, anything at all. There has to be some way out, their plan can't be this perfect-!

"So... If I do not own up to something, Hanamura may be forced to headbutt a dangerous kitchen appliance?" Nidai muses, and Koizumi would have given him a warning look if she didn't happen to be completely focused on her screen at present. As it is, she frowns a little, then sighs and just watches the little chef's attempts to hold back his own anger. When he glances into the camera after a long moment, she can't help but feel that it's directed at her; she tries to smile, but it comes out stiff and fake enough that he growls and looks away, and Mioda mutters something about her needing lessons.

XXXX: Choose between outing yourself,  
and punishing your friends for your crime.

XXXX: Despairing, no?

 _We won't despair!_ Koizumi thinks to herself, and she figures from the way the others draw themselves upright at the statement that they're thinking something similar. There's something like a brief flash of pride at that, a slight warmness in her heart despite the constant chill of fear. Really, they're not going to go down easily, and if this person is assuming that for so much as a minute, they're badly mistaken.

XXXX: So. Put your hand in the air where I can  
see it!

XXXX: Then you can put down a finger every time  
you admit to doing something. Gotta keep  
count of the questions somehow!

And Koizumi can see that no–one wants to do it - there's several seconds of stubborn silence before one by one, they each shudder at the command, and one by one, they raise a hand, using their view of their own screens to make sure that their fingers are visible. Souda is the first to comply, glancing between both his hands before he decides on his left, and Nidai is quick to follow the move, mimicking the mechanic before remembering that he's left–handed and swapping hands. Hanamura heaves a huge sigh of irritation (or at least, huge given how short he is), before raising one hand with a minimum of effort; Mioda holds up two fingers on one hand and two on the other in a gesture known to some as 'devil horns' , before giggling nervously and raising a third on her left hand. Koizumi is as usual the last to react, perhaps because she's the most stubborn or perhaps because she has the slowest connection, but after a hesitation her hand goes up as well.

She tells herself that it's just because she wants to follow Mioda into hell again, help her girlfriend in any way she possibly can, but it's hard to believe that's all it is when she's shaking all over, trembling almost as badly as Nidai's camera feed. 

XXXX: Good. Who here did all my   
maths homework for me for like...  
I think it was six weeks straight?

" _No–one!_ " Nidai thunders, taking up an aggressive stance that involves staring hard into the camera, leaning forwards, and bellowing like a wounded bull. "We would never have helped Junko Enoshima like that!"

_So, you already believe this person is..._

"H-hey now..." Hanamura begins, wringing his hands before remembering that he should still have one high in the air. "I don't think doing her maths homework is the _worst_ thing we could have done 'cos she told us to. I mean... I-it's not scream-worthy, mmn?"

XXXX: 3....

Koizumi frowns, rubbing at her temples. "I guess it could just be a trick question. We don't know who 'me' is for certain, so maybe they're _actually_ saying 'who did Sonia's homework' or something."

"But it's the first question, soooo someone here probably did it! The trick questions aren't usually the first ones, yeah?" Mioda trills, gesturing with both hands at the camera. 

"And besides, it's obvious!" Nidai snarls. "They've been hinting that they are Enoshima so much, even Owari could have worked it out by now!"

"We don't know for _sure!_ " the photographer shoots back. "It's not like they've gone 'GUESS WHO?!?' or something-"

XXXX: 2...

"Wh–wh–whaaaaaaAAAA?!?" Souda screeches, drowning out the rest of her words; Koizumi rolls her eyes at the camera and makes a big show of turning down the volume on her headphones. "Some kinda countdown?!? I–I was hoping we could just get her stuck on the one question!"

"Who did it?!? I don't want to be maimed!" Hanamura yowls, and much to Koizumi's surprise Souda actually stops wailing, and looking straight into his camera, answers the chef quite calmly, putting down one finger as he does so.

"That was me." The view switches between his six different ones as he continues to speak, resulting in a thoroughly bizarre distortion of his words; sometimes he sounds like he's further away, sometimes it sounds like he's practically got his lips glued to the camera's microphone. "She _did_ say that if I did twice the work as everyone else, I'd impress all the ladies..."

XXXX: Okay, so that whole putting-down-a-finger-thing  
looks kind of stupid instead of dramatic

"Y-you... you WHAT?!?" Nidai snarls, and you can really hear the all–caps there. The mechanic squeals at the noise, taking off his headphones to try and escape the coach's rage; a little fiddling around with his computer and several crackling noises later, Koizumi can hear Nidai's ranting echoed in Souda's feed a few seconds after the fact, and guesses that he's put the call onto his loudspeakers. "Souda, this is atrocious! Think of your school record! You will have to work extremely hard to make up for this! Not that you can't do that, but I do worry about how low your reputation already is!"

"Wh-what does that even have to do with-?!? N-never mind, it... it was just after Miss Sonia broke up with me–! Heat of the moment! A–and she was really nice to me, so I figured–"

Mioda of course wolf-whistles. "Heyyyyyy! Guess what, everyone? Kazuichi-chan broke up with Sonia-chaaaan!"

"How many times does that make it?" Koizumi wonders out loud, though more for playing along with the bizarre tangent things have taken than for openly shaming Souda - as pathetic as the mechanic can be, she doesn't see that as a reason to bully him. 

"Never fear, for I completely understand poor Souda's plight!" Hanamura purrs, laughing a little as he says that; Koizumi guesses it's because of the stress that built up to a critical point in the last few seconds before Souda went and confessed. "She's an awfully nice girl, with awfully nice assets – pun _fully_ intended, of course!" A pause, then he adds with a sly grin: "If I may explain my joke... assets... ass-ets..."

XXXX: Everyone, hands down, you   
all look like idiots instead of  
bastards.

"Sweet!" Mioda grins, laying her hands in her lap; her smile's so genuine that if it wasn't for the running makeup and the red, swollen eyes, Koizumi might have actually believed that she was happy about the present situation. "Now Ibuki can type just right again! She was kiiiiinda worried about typing with her tongue!" She holds up a dart; in typical Mioda fashion, the end is fletched with several large feathers off what Koizumi hopes is a rather large chicken. "Or with _this_ in her teeth, if Ibuki was feeling particularly daring!"

XXXX: Moooooving on

XXXX: Soooo. Who here has

_Kwip!_

"Wha–?" Koizumi begins, hurriedly cutting herself off before the others can become curious; XXXX has messaged her in a private chat, and she knows that whatever the content, she should keep it quiet. She takes a deep breath, then opens the chat with no small amount of caution; hesitating on the click, her cursor roaming about the edges of the screen while Skype loads.

XXXX: Who betrayed me?

The photographer's never typed so quickly in her life.

_I don't know__

_I don't__

_I__

___Kwip!_ _ _

Mahiru–chan: Is that what this's  
all about?

_Kwip!_

XXXX: Nah, that's far too petty.

XXXX: Do you know what I want?

_Kwip!_

Mahiru–chan: What do you mean?

_XXXX is typing..._

_Kwip!_

_Kwip!_

Koizumi waits, but the insistent sound of a busy chat is soon too much for her to continue ignoring. Yet again, she pulls herself away from any answers and back into the terror of the unknown, promising herself that she'll find out what's happening with the help of her friends. After all, a communal effort is a noble, hopeful thought indeed – perhaps if she keeps on dreaming of unity, it might just–

– and then the chat–log loads, and she feels something cold and dead in her chest.

XXXX: a whole diary  
dedicated to how much they hate me?

XXXX: 3...

XXXX: 2...

_That..._

                                                                                                                                          XXXX: 1...

_That was..._

XXXX: Time's up! No–one owned up, either.

XXXX: You all know what that means!

_You distracted me, so I wouldn't own up in time–!_

XXXX: Well, if you were paying attention.

XXXX: Do you bastards need a recap?

"Guys, it was me!" the photographer yells, gripping the edge of her desk with both hands; the knuckles turn yellow, but she couldn't care less. Even though it's far too late, far too many seconds after the chat loaded; she _has_ to try, if only to keep them all safe. "It– it was me, okay?!? I know I didn't say it beforehand, but - it was me! And I'm owning up now, so– "

XXXX: Trying to be all noble about it  
won't help you.

XXXX: Koizumi totally did it, but didn't own up.

XXXX: So, iiiiiit's punishment time!

"So now Koizumi will be punished for her misdeed?!?" Nidai howls, and for once there's something less than confidence in his voice; something clawing and needy, something desperate and shaky. "You cannot change the rules so abruptly-!"

XXXX: Actually, I've just always  
wanted to say that.

XXXX: But hey, let's spin the wheel!

She rests her head on her screen at that, taking little gaspy breaths in between her sniveling and sobbing. How can she possibly help anyone now, when she just went and sent one of her group members to a punishment they never deserved? To try would be to be completely hypocritical, and yet some selfish part of her expects that the others will still trust her despite this – no, no, it _hopes_. 

 _Maybe... Maybe the wheel will land on me?_ she thinks, and that becomes a selfish hope in itself. If the offender is punished, there'll be no call for justice, no grudges, no nothing. The avenger will have failed, just for once in their so carefully planned-out quest to make them all despair, and the idea's something that the photographer would really take heart at.

XXXX: <http://i62.tinypic.com/25j837b.jpg>

But then the accusations from the others start, the repeated _kwip–kwip–kwip_ starts, and no matter how loudly Koizumi cries and whimpers, she can't block out what's happening so close to her yet so far away, right in her ears yet many metres away and behind multiple locked doors. And even before she's clicked on the link, or clicked on the private chats with Mioda and XXXX to see those frantic messages, she already knows what must have happened; she can already feel the aftermath, a lead ball in the stomach and a fluttering in her breathing.

_Kwip!_

XXXX: Despair. That's the answer~

XXXX: Sorry for taking so long, I  
got a little busy.

_Kwip!_

Ibuki: I'm so sorry

Ibuki: but I have to do this

_No... no, no, nonononono–_

_you don't have to do this__

_you don't__

_don't__

Ibuki: I don't want to die. ;)

Mahiru-chan: nononononononono

The dart rises with the fall of her heart, and falls with the rise of her screaming.


	4. Scream

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> (you are too far gone, can’t go back, struggle and thrash and forever fail)

Something must have happened to Mioda's camera somewhere around that point, for with a loud burst of static, the feed abruptly goes dark – or maybe it's just because she's too close to the camera for anything to be picked up, Koizumi isn't sure. She did catch the glint of metal and a flash of feathers just before this happened, however – and unfortunately, her mind's logical enough to put two and two together in a matter of seconds, leaving her to scream over everyone else, shaking her screen in frustration.

"Miodaaaaaaaaa! G–get back here, where I can see you breathing and everything!"

"Breathing's a fetish, now?" Hanamura says, though it's but an irritating murmur in comparison to the absolute cacophany Koizumi is unleashing upon the unfortunate Skype chat. Her words come stumbling, half–coherent, half–lost in the screams and yips and wails as she tries not to sob her heart out and fails abysmally at doing that.

"Mioda, don't do this, th–this is the worst joke ever, okay?!? I admit it, you win, _whatever_ – just... C–come back, show me that you're just fine! Playing a stupid game like this, playing dead... I don’t know if it’s a cool thing to do or something, but I don’t care! Y–you ought to know it's not funny, not right here and now, so just stop–!"

"Why the hell're you even yelling about this?!?" Souda howls at her as she pauses for air.

“I–I!” she tries, but that’s all she manages around her breathing; short, panicked gasps, ugly sniffling in between. She chokes on her own words, shaking her head, spluttering coughing, and the mechanic’s knowledge of How Girls Work is apparently so bad that he somehow takes this as an opening to resume yelling.

"You killedher, dammit!" he goes on, and _social relations be damned_ , Koizumi is completely in all–out battle mode as of now. How dare he insult her for being upset about her girlfriend's death? Even if Mioda _is_ dead, which she doesn’t want to believe for a second despite overwhelming evidence to the contrary – no, no, Mahiru Koizumi is not for even a moment guilty of killing her! It’s just chance that it happened – she got distracted for a minute, and the next thing she knew–

The words are coming before that thought can be completed, just as they tend to when she’s angry. "I didn't do it, so just shut up! Like I said before, th–that _thing_ went and distracted me, and the next thing I knew, this happened–!" She’s snarling, he’s snarling right back, and suddenly she wants to laugh at the stupidity of it all. Just a few minutes ago, she was afraid of going off at someone else, afraid of what it might do to the others. Now that Mioda’s gone, she’s fighting with quite possibly the least stable person in the group, paying no heed whatsoever to Hanamura and Nidai’s gentle encouragements for both of them to back off, back down, and possibly get a room (she’s not entirely sure on that one, it went by too fast and soft). It’s as though she’s completely given up on ‘the group’, even though she pushes that thought back and refuses to admit it.

“Or... well, whatever–the–dart–thing–was–supposed–to–be–happened,” Koizumi finishes. After a moment, she adds “I didn’t get a good look at the camera or anything... So, we don’t know for sure she’s dead”, and swallows back her snickers there – if she starts laughing now, everyone will think she’s going mad, which will only worsen her case, hasten her own descent into despair. She's so close to the edge already, and it's only been perhaps half an hour of this anxious, awful ordeal – her only comfort is that XXXX hasn't gone on with the game yet, and she really doesn't want to think about what will happen if it goes on.

XXXX: What _was_ the dart–thing  
you saw, I wonder...

XXXX: Despair, perhaps?

That's of course the sort of thing designed to freak everyone out, and it works, somewhat – there's a surprised noise from Hanamura as though this was the first time despair had been brought up, and Nidai starts yelling all about how he's going to hunt down Enoshima for her "messed–up sense of humour".  But it only works _somewhat_ , since just for once Souda completely ignores XXXX, and just carries right on screaming at Koizumi even as she screams back – because they both know that this isn't just about XXXX and their stupid, despairing game anymore, not now that someone in their group is possibly dead and another has been blamed for it. As he rants, much of it unprintable, the photographer guesses that the shift in focus away from their tormentor is something of a small victory for them, but what a price to pay to get it.

"Oh?" Souda's growling now, spreading his arms wide as he makes what he imagines to be a very convincing end to whatever ridiculous accusations he just launched at her. "Are you sure that wheel wasn't rigged up or something?!? You girlfriends are always gettin' jealous and tryin' to kill each other, television says so!"

"Television says so? _Television says so?!?_ " She can't help but repeat it, can't help but be even more shocked on the second repetition – if they weren't locked in completely different rooms, she'd have grabbed the bastard by the collar and _pulled_ , strangling the life out of him for daring to yell say something so stupid, for daring to compare her and Mioda's such real, wonderful love–life to fictional stereotypes and dull plots written by forty–year–old–men (or possibly nineteen–year–old girls posing as forty–year–old men online). God, she so desperately wants to choke him and slap him and maybe even kick him right where it hurts, just like Mioda always threatened to do to guys who looked at her the wrong way. But instead, all she can do is stare at her screen, watch him pant and shiver at his, and realize as he does that there’s nothing he can do about what’s happened to Mioda, let alone what words have been said between them, and there's nothing that she can do either, no matter how desperate she is, how angry and frightened she is.

No, no – Mioda is the only person who can make everything all right again, and it’s not like she even has to do much to make things all sunshine and rainbows – or at least, it's not like she has to do much to stop Koizumi from slipping further into despair, stop Souda from screeching accusations at her. All the guitarist has to do is get up, move, yell, snore, just do _something_ to show the others that she’s alive. But if she’s dead, which the photographer is increasingly starting to believe – well, she can’t do any of that stuff, logic says she can’t, and neither Koizumi, nor Souda nor anyone else on the planet could possibly make her alive, make the world all right again.

Eventually, the realisation overwhelms her completely – Mioda's never going to come back, things will never be all right – and so she just kind of curls up in a ball on her chair, sobbing as loudly as she’ll dare without her camera’s microphone picking it up. Apparently it’s more sensitive than she thinks, though, or maybe Souda’s about as resilient as she is when it comes to dealing with loss – either way, when she next looks up at her screen, she finds that the mechanic has drawn up his knees and buried his face in them, whimpering and whining and sniffling."I–I'm sorry, okay? I... I just didn't wanna be your _next_ victim..."

Koizumi’s pride and heart are both broken by this point, but her temper still flares a little at that, an old reaction towards any accusation that she’s never been able to control. In something resembling a half–dead snake's reaction to being poked with a sharp stick, she uncurls enough to raise her head towards her camera, and lets out something that might have been a growl if not for the shaky breathing and the sobbing; it comes out as something undoubtedly pitiful. “It’s not l–like I _picked_ her out to die or something, come on! Stop thinking that already!"

"You had better not be tryin' to mind control me or somethin' over the connection!" the mechanic replies, but the venom that was once in his voice is gone for the most part. His words feel more like a terrible joke than an insult, a joke that not even he's able to laugh at; he's sobbing pretty darn loudly only seconds after he said it, after all.

And maybe they'd have both cried for a long time and just not said anything to each other for the rest of the night, and maybe it would have all ended there. But the ordeal's not just Koizumi's and Souda's – it's somewhere around this point that Hanamura raises his voice enough that the two combatants blink and finally become aware that no, they’re not the only two online and active in this chat. "L–like Koizumi was saying before, we don’t know for sure that she was killed. I mean, I–I saw the flash of metal, but I didn’t think it meant–! An', anyway, if that was a ‘3’ level punishment... _wh'hell’sa‘5’leve'?!?_ ”

Towards the end, his voice goes somehow shriller than Koizumi’s was moments before, and she has to turn down the volume on her computer once more – though this time, she finds that the few seconds she spends doing so are a welcome, albeit very brief, break from the ridiculous amounts of stress this one awful Skype chat has caused her. She almost considers dragging it out, finding some kind of excuse to just leave the conversation for a few minutes – checking up on Mioda's Facebook account to see if anything has been left there by the hacker, for instance – but she's too scared to be distracted once again, the memory of what happened the last time she got distracted from XXXX's sick game too fresh in her mind.

So, she takes a deep breath, and goes back into it.

"Tch... Mioda's not dying, is she?" Nidai's snorting now, having finally gotten up the courage from Hanamura's entry to raise his own voice over Souda's muttering about how dead the guitarist totally is, and how Koizumi probably organized this whole stupid thing just to bump off her girlfriend or something, and when's April Fool's day anyway. "From what I could tell, she... stabbed herself with a dart and somehow took out the camera in the process? There is no need to get so upset here! I trust that a girl of Mioda stubbornness and spirit will make a full recovery–"

"Oh, like _you_ can talk!" Souda snaps back at him, with enough vehemence that he only realizes his terrible mistake well after he's spat out his next line. "You're the one who got all angry at me for – for _doing Enoshima's homework!_ "

"That's different! You actually did that – whether or not Mioda is dead is something we don't know for sure!" Nidai shakes one enormous fist at his webcam, and this is around the point when the mechanic realizes that yes, if he and Nidai were in the same room right now he'd be much more than boned – skinned and gutted, at the very least. The look on the poor guy's face is almost enough to send Koizumi into peals of laughter, but she knows that once she's started giggling, she'll never be able to stop, and so she manages to restrain herself for now.

Speaking of restraint, Hanamura apparently has none whatsoever. "You're sounding awfully desperate", he purrs, never about to miss a moment to make a lewd comment. "Why do I get the feeling that the next question'll be 'Who here's knocked up a certain 'horny' guitarist?"

"Guys, calm down – and Hanamura, shut up about the horns –" Koizumi begins, but then _XXXX is typing_ she finds herself cut off, even though XXXX never makes a sound beyond the usual _kwip_.

XXXX: Okay, that's enough of that.

On his camera, the little chef raises a finger as though to argue there – presumably because he has many, many more atrocious horny jokes.

XXXX: What did I say about the fingers?!?

For once, Koizumi's glad that XXXX is so good at enforcing silence; she really didn't need to hear whatever argument Hanamura was going to make.

XXXX: Who here has... worn a giant  
dragon head to a convention?

Mahiru–chan: What does that have  
to do with Enoshima?  


_Thought this was all about you__

_Thought this was all about__

Mahiru–chan: Thought this was all  
about her???

XXXX: They tried to nom on  
Enoshima with the head.

And Koizumi tenses there, because she knows exactly who they're talking about, and _of course_ it's the one person who'll never confess – if it were anyone else, it'd be a useless exercise in dragging them all into despair, since it's not the sort of thing she can see them all fighting about.

Souda blinks, rubbing at the back of his neck. "Hey, uh... Wasn't that Mioda? Like, it sounds like the sorta thing she'd do. And – I remember her sayin' something about tryin' to rig up the lights in the head and getting all the wires crossed."

"That's right – she asked me herself for advice on moving about whilst wearing the head!" Nidai agrees, and the two blokes both smile into their cameras, before both realize the exact implications of the now–very–much–silent Mioda having done the deed, and both start shouting very loudly about it. Hanamura says nothing, but he doesn't need to; his pale, sweating visage and the fact that he appears to be screaming without making a sound says it all, really. Koizumi shakes her head, trying desperately to keep things together despite the fact that they're all on the verge of despair now, all well and truly trapped with no other options left beyond despairing. They know the rules, and Mioda's death (or injury, or _whatever_ ) proved them to be perfectly serious; they know that there will definitely be consequences for not owning up to this, but they also know that no–one can own up for something Mioda's done. Unless she either wakes up or comes back to life depending on her current state, the wheel'll be spun again.

XXXX: 3...

Koizumi closes her eyes, but she can't block out the _kwip!_ that announces XXXX's steps closer and closer to the countdown. The end's coming, someone else is going to be killed off because Mioda – the photographer's hope – is dead, and there's nothing anyone can do.

_Kwip!_

_Maybe... maybe they'll get me this time._

_Kwip!_

_Then I... won't have to despair..._

_Kwip!_

That's three _kwips_ ; so the countdown must be over now, their fate decided.

XXXX: No takers? Guess I'm counting  
down, then.

XXXX: 3...

XXXX: 2...

_XXXX is typing..._

_XXXX and others are typing..._

_Kwip!_

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Free reminder that it all ends next chapter. Will everyone die? Will everyone despair? Does anyone care about XXXX's Actual Identity at this point? #WeJustDon'tKnow, but we will likely know sometime my tomorrow.


End file.
